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A Newfangled Sandbox Arrives (Check Out the Canals)

By Corey Kilgannon July 26, 2010 6:49 pmJuly 26, 2010 6:49 pm

Photographs by Ruby Washington/The New York TimesEthan Laird, 7, left, and his brother, Maxwell, 8, tried Monday to grasp the concept of an umbrella made of water at the new Imagination Playground at the South Street Seaport.

Manhattan playgrounds are serious stuff.

Swings, slides and seesaws are so 20th century, an antiquated approach to child leisure now routinely laughed out of the sandbox of learning theory. These days, child learning experts recommend playgrounds that equip children with “loose parts” and other tools to create a “child directed” play space.

So do not be surprised if there is a – child-directed – line of budding young geniuses outside the figure-8-shaped Imagination Playground when it opens Tuesday at the South Street Seaport in Lower Manhattan.

The playground has been five years in the making, a result of tons of research in progressive learning theory and child-development research, as well as $7.4 million in financing. In smaller, portable versions, it has been tested and tweaked after trial tours all over the city.

The playground’s entrance is guarded by an iron sea serpent.

Instead of monkey bars and jungle gyms, there are fountains with canals of cascading water that can be dammed in infinite ways, or transformed into a network of rivers. There is an engaging set of lifts and pulleys. Play is proctored and interaction fostered by a staff of city workers trained as “play associates.”

The playground, a free park open to the public with daytime hours, was designed at no charge to the city by David Rockwell, an architect whose firm, the Rockwell Group, is known for creating snazzy interiors for restaurants like Nobu and Emeril’s and other projects, including the viewing platform at ground zero. Mr. Rockwell, who lives in Lower Manhattan, has two children, ages 8 and 10, and he found that the playgrounds around his home did not sufficiently challenge their imagination.

“At these conventional playgrounds, you have a lot of linear thinking – kids standing on line for swings and slides,” he said at the playground Monday as it got its final city inspection. “I kept thinking we should have a playground that invites kids to make their own play space.”

So Mr. Rockwell began his quest to design a more engaging play space, one that encouraged unstructured and independent play. He said he “cold called” the city’s parks commissioner, Adrian Benepe. Mr. Benepe was game. He saw the new park as the next chapter in New York City playgrounds dating back to the Seward Park playground and making their mark every generation, for example in the 1950s with European-style “adventure playgrounds.”

“From this playground,” Mr. Benepe said, “will come the next generation of architects and engineers. Maybe the next mayor or City Council speaker.”

All of this is great in theory, but how would the real experts rate the playground?

The newfangled playground is also appropriate for old-school moves.

To find out, this reporter brought in his intrepid deputy: his 9-year-old daughter, Lena, a grizzled veteran of the old-school playgrounds of Riverside Park.

She would be assisted by Maxwell and Ethan Laird, 8 and 7, sons of two parks department officials, who cut their teeth at the Tompkins Square Park playgrounds.

Even as workers were putting finishing touches on the premises, the little pirates were set loose.

They headed straight for the “loose parts,” an array of blue blocks and props made of firm foam and shaped like various Tinkertoys and tubes and water tunnels. They piled them up into various fantastical functions. Lena did not know these boys but ran to help build. They looked up briefly and immediately put her to work. Now they were playing together.

The playground — located at Burling Slip, a parcel of land that was once a watery slip for ships — is the first new playground the parks department has opened downtown in about a decade. It is a public-private partnership that Mr. Benepe said might be repeated elsewhere.

The playground was financed with federal money through the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, Mr. Benepe said, with construction costing $4.3 million and $3 million more used to relocate a water main that was under the parcel, which was functioning as a parking lot. The Rockwell Group has raised an endowment fund to maintain the playground.

And the children? They howled to one another through cone-shaped openings in a set of red and yellow pipes. Then they dragged the loose parts along the playground’s sloping wooden ramps to the land of sand and water at the west end of the park, dominated by four wooden masts made by a shipbuilder, each mast connected by a series of ropes and pulleys and cranks that transport empty sacks, which may be filled with sand and other materials.

Much of the playground relates to the area’s maritime history and setting. There is a crow’s nest atop a red, circular structure housing bathrooms and a storage space.

The east end resembles a ship’s bow, a rounded amphitheater-like deck overlooking a fountain play space. The water cascades through little canals into an ankle-deep pool and can be dammed with wood planking.

The park testers descended upon a short water pump spouting a circular sheet of water shaped like a mushroom or a jellyfish. Maxwell slid under it, staying dry under the water.

He reported to his mother: “Mommy, it’s an umbrella, and whenever it rains, it adds to the umbrella.”

Then I looked to my daughter, my little budding young journalist. Just the facts, I demanded.

“My sneakers are filled with water,” she screamed.

Mr. Rockwell took a swig of water and said, “The critics have spoken.”

Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, left, and the playground’s designer, David Rockwell, at the playground as work crews prepared for Tuesday’s opening.

Great ideas, fantastic playground, and I”m saddened that I’m too old to play there really. Sort of the same improvement that legos are over toy cars, letting kids’ imagination run free instead of within set parameters.

Also I like the idea of a grizzled, veteran 9-year old, jaded and grouchy.

Sorry to sound like sour grapes, but I’ll cheer for this after one single, solitary playground or open space is put in Throggs Neck in the Bronx. There are zero, I repeat, zero playgrounds within walking distance of Harding and Tremont Avenue. Not a single open space or public park anywhere. When land becomes available, it seems the developers always beat everyone else to it. I wonder why that is? While I am truly happy for these Manhattan children, it saddens me to see a “$7.4 million in financing” park put in one the most affluent borough while others suffer with nothing. $7.4 million is an awful lot of swing sets for us “linear thinking” folks.

“From this playground,” Mr. Benepe said, “will come the next generation of architects and engineers. Maybe the next mayor or City Council speaker.” That’s great, but what about the kids that have nothing to begin with? I guess they should content themselves with the prospect of the many low-level jobs the new architects and engineers won’t want.

all the new playgrounds popping up by the harbor are truly wonderful and our kids for one are really enjoying them, but I too would like to put in a vote for including SHADE! Set in areas without mature trees and by the water these new parks roast you and the kids to a crisp. Maybe tall poles with a sun screen material stretched between?? Come on architects I know you can do it!

It’s not just the Bronx. If I walk for half-an-hour (that’s MY pace, not the kids’ pace!) I can get to a dreary, small, uninspired playground that hasn’t been renovated in years, with chipped paint and missing padding, right by the projects.

Or I can go into Manhattan. Now, granted, I like taking the Ferry, but it’s not exactly convenient after school in the winter!

I’m sure I’ll get roasted for this, but once again our car hating mayor has removed more parking from the city. I’m sure his entourage won’t be bothered, but the rest of us will.

This park sounds great, but what happens to it during the winter? A parking lot can be used 24/7 in every season.

I don’t want to sound like the Grinch, but how about a little equality? Wasn’t Times Square enough? The cost of vehicle ownership escalates to cover MTA costs, a $25/year surcharge now, but no place to park. My motorcycle registration went from $14 to $61 in one year with all the additional fees. Enough!

This was not the Park Commissioner’s idea to build this playgroud but it was an architect who took the initiative and had resources to develop it and maintain it. We need people like this in all the boroughs so new and improved playgrounds for our children can be developed.

Oddly enough there is another Imagination Playground in the city and it is based on the stories of Ezra Jack Keats. It was created by a truly creative landscape architecture staff. Visit Brooklyn’s PROSPECT PARK and check out that award winning IMAGINATION play space!!!

Dear SOur Grapes,
I lived in the lower east side for over 25 years and there are plenty of children who have nothing there also. Instead of fighting about who has what, why not encourage city officials to put a park in your part of town.
I like the fact that the park is in the lower east side. It’s too bad that it took an architect who lived there to make the idea happen.
Also, isn’t 7.3 Million a lot of money for a small park, especially since the design was free. Who is making all this money?

Steve-
When you say “the rest of us” you mean the minority of people in New York City who actually own a car. As a fact, most people in NYC do not own a car. It is anything but equal to have a parking lot taking up most of the street, when most people would rather it be used for something like a playground. Living in NYC, it is unnecessary to own a car/motorcycle unless you live in far flung parts of Staten Island or Queens, so charging drivers more to pollute the environment is a good thing. If NYC wants to move forward and get rid of congestion, cars cannot be in the equation as much as they are now.

On the topic of sand boxes. I would love to see them in the outer boroughs. I have asked the Parks Department why there are no sandboxes in my neighborhood in the Bronx, or as far as I can tell anywhere outside of Manhattan, and the response I got was troubling. I was told that residents in the outer boroughs do not treat the sand boxes with respect. The obvious implication being that residents of Manhattan can be trusted with a sand box, but the rest of us cannot.

Yeah for our children.
Having worked as a teacher for 20 years in Astoria, I would pass the entrance way to Riker’s Island. Every morning the busloads of inmates would roll out full of young men on their way to court. As a strong advocate for parks for our children, my thoughts were always “Did these young people have decent parks in which to play, interact and learn the social skills needed for life?”
Sure, the cost of parks is high, but no where as high as the cost of prison.

So, we take the jungle gyms away from the fat, McDonald’s- Bloated youth of America and replace it with a place where the kids SIT and think about becoming architects and engineers? Isn’t this what Lincoln Logs and Legos do at a lot less cost? I also seem to remember Erector Sets and Tinker Toys in a world that existed a long time ago.

Somebody made the comment that a vacant lot was what developed imaginations, and there’s a great deal of wisdom in that remark.

Meanwhile, let’s all watch the little tykes turn into Fat Bodies. If I was a McDonald’s or BK or Wendy’s franchisee I’d be rubbing my palms in glee at the thought of selling burgers and fries to the kids who get exhausted from moving foam blocks at the 7.4 million dollar playground.

This type of experience should be available for every child..the most obvious location would be the local public school….there instead of running around in circles on concrete, children could explore and use their imaginations and expand their cognitive and social horizons…The problems arise in funding and continued upkeep..both which could be figured out with minimal effort.

Indeed… while the other boroughs get nothing. My kids would love a nice playground here in southeastern Queens. In the past five years, my real estate taxes have almost doubled, yet the two closest playgrounds – which are long walks away – remain covered in garbage and debris, with minimal, mediocre equipment. I guess those extra taxes have to be used to fund all those special projects in Manhattan.

OMG is all the hostility linked to my managing to comment first again? I know there’s a lot of reasons to complain out there, particularly relating to Bloomberg (eg: the death of St. Vincent’s), but building a new innovative kids park?

OK I tried to be nice but now I’m going to switch to bitingly sarcastic, in defense of this new playground. If ya don’t want to read a lot of sarcasm, skip to the next comment. So here’s my comebacks for some of the above:

1) Yes we all know Manhattan has it better than the other boroughs in a variety of ways; this one park is really the least of it. But keep in mind that this park is a subway ride away for some 90% of Manhattanites, it is not walking distance except from that weird Battery Park development. The housing right next to South St. Seaport is public housing I believe, so this is really most convenient for some lower income folks.

2) Etan Patz, what an obscure reference. Well I actually went to PS 3 annex (or PS 234 now) while Etan Patz did (so I remember the event well), so that kidnapping must have been about 1980. I don’t think any kids have been snatched from South St. Seaport in the last 30 years, but I could be wrong. Nonetheless, there should be shaded areas, and these can be added in easily, as was done over the large metal dome in the new playground in Union Sq. (some designer didn’t realize metal heats up in the sun… duh).

3) How many kids parks could you build in da Bronx for 7.4 million? Well, probably one of this quality. If you want to settle for cheapo swings and seesaws from the 50’s, which will make the kids up there just love it, maybe four or five small parks. But how many people take their kids to residential neighborhoods in the boroughs?

4) Which brings up the central point, this is a groundbreaking, boldly different new park, and I can’t think of many better places than right by South St. Seaport, which despite the 45 minute subway ride was a favorite spot of mine in kidhood. Took me years to find out I could have even walked there from PS 234.

5) I’ll come up with more comebacks after some more highly caffeinated coffee, but first, none of you complaining are children, am I right? So why not, before complaining more about this brand new thing, ask some intended recipient (a kid) what they think about it. Even a jaded, veteran tween-ager.

While it sounds like fun, I would rather see a playground that still can give a kid some physical exercise. You can do cognitive play indoors. You need jungle gyms and stairs on a slide to climb up, and swings too. A place to use those muscles!

I’m sensing a disturbance in the Force… if my previous lengthy sarcastic rant is causing a moderator to have an asthma attack, I’d like to say: just delete it bro, I’ll repost something more civilized along the same lines later. Cheers!

we have a playground with similar ‘free play’ features here in cambridge. however, instead of large foam blocks, the designers provided solid wood blocks, with which the kids inadvertently (or purposefully) hurt each other.

the sand pit with faucet in my neighborhood playground is perfect. you don’t really need fancy things to keep kids happy. just a safe place free of broken bottles, trash, and poop.

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